Landmarks in British Farming. 
11 
his neighbour blocked up the outfalls. Consequently, the arable 
land was rarely cleaned ; choked with docks and thistles, over- 
run with rushes and nettles, pitted with wet places, pimpled 
with ant-hills and mole-heaps, it made the minimum return for 
the maximum seeding. Turnips and clover could not be adopted, 
unless a large body of ignorant, prejudiced, suspicious co-pro- 
prietors agreed together to leave the beaten track in which their 
ancestors had plodded. No individual, even if he had possessed 
the genius of Bakewell, could improve his live-stock, since 
infectious diseases were rarely absent from the promiscuously- 
herded, half-starved cattle of the community, and the scab was 
rarely absent from the common fold, or the rot from the ill- 
drained field. 
Yet, in spite of these disadvantages, it is probable that, so 
long as the land was only required to provide for the wants 
of the tillers of the soil, custom Avould have preserved the 
wasteful open-field system. The agricultural progress of six 
centuries may be practically summed up in the change from 
open-field farms to enclosed holdings, or in the transition from 
farming as a domestic industry to farming as a manufactory of 
bread and beef for the million. It is the history of a good 
machine driving out a bad one. 
In this progress, four periods are most conspicuous : (1) 
1230-1310; (2) 1485-1600; (3) 1760-1815; (4) 1845-73. 
Each of these four periods has its distinctive feature. In the 
first, serfdom and slavery die out, and the relations of occupiers 
to owners of soil assume more modern aspects. In the second, 
feudal dependence yields to commercial independence ; retainers 
give place to sheep ; self-suflScing farming loses its absolute 
supremacy ; farming for profit begins. In the third, tillage 
supplants pasture ; bread and meat become more important than 
wool ; agriculture as a domestic industry disappears before the 
agricultural factory ; commons, wastes, open-field farms, are 
replaced by the new system of enclosures, reclamation of wastes, 
consolidation of holdings, capitalist landlords and tenants. In 
the fourth, science is applied to agricultural practice ; the new 
system is perfected, and adapted to new requirements ; high 
farming is adopted and generally diffused. The intervals 
between these periods are, with the exception of the first sixty 
years of the eighteenth century, periods of agricultural or 
social distress. They are also periods of transition, preparation, 
theoretical discovery, local improvement, and accumulation of 
stores of experience by which the recovery and progress of 
farming in the next period are promoted and secured. 
